Gina Rubel Discusses Building Authority to Lead Crisis Communications
Date: November 9, 2026
Location: 2026 LMA Northeast Regional Conference, New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge, New York, NY
Register: https://www.lmanortheastconference.com/
Topic: Building the Authority to Lead Communications Before, During, and After Crisis
Speakers:
Gina Rubel, CEO & General Counsel of Furia Rubel Communications
Description: When a crisis hits, communications professionals are expected to move fast, lead with confidence, and protect the firm’s reputation. Yet many legal marketers are handed that responsibility without the authority to match it; they must clear every word through layers of attorneys, wait on sign-off from leadership that doesn’t yet see communications as a strategic function, and act as the face of decisions they didn’t get to make.
Drawing on more than two decades advising Am Law firms, boutiques, and in-house legal departments through litigation communications, incident response, and reputational crises, Gina Rubel will show attendees how to close that authority gap before the crisis ever happens. This session moves past crisis theory into the tactical groundwork that earns communicators a seat at the table with pre-negotiated approval protocols, message-mapping frameworks attorneys will actually sign off on quickly, and language that reframes communications from a support function into a risk-mitigation partner that leadership trusts.
This is not a lecture on ‘what to do when the media calls.’ It is a working session on building the internal influence and infrastructure that make fast, credible communication possible when it matters most.
Attendees will develop:
- A ready-to-adopt tool that pre-defines who approves what, before a crisis hits.
- A script for facilitating sign-off authority with managing partners and general counsel, grounded in risk language that attorneys respond to.
- A self-assessment to identify where their own function currently sits on the authority spectrum, and a concrete next step to move up it.
- Real, de-identified examples from litigation communications and incident response engagements, including what worked and what backfired.